Apologies I had posted this on the wrong episode, it is supposed to go here. I will have to clean it all up later...
This episode focusing on Max Fenig sets the stage for the step by step deconstruction of the incident by Mulder in the next episode. However, before he (and we) can go into that, he must piece together what had happened with the meager clues available. They're also must be more information given about Max. We do know a bit about this character from his first appearance in "Fallen Angel", this pair of episodes gets into much more detail.
Meager clues, because some agency, some agent, some unknown person is making evidence disappear. We see short vignettes of this activity, all coordinated by a man who appears similar to the person who had threatened Mulder and Scully in "Deep Throat" with the consequences of "intense indiscretion"- in Deep Throat that person was Stephen McHattie (uncredited and unnamed at that time)... in this episode the character is played by Greg Michaels (as Scott Garrett- but they do not even name this person in the episode, he is just another man in black like McHattie). But the two actors even have the same body type and voice inflections. This man spearheads the cleanup of all evidence that points to military involvement, including silencing both of the military air traffic controllers that saw something.
Meanwhile we didn't know Max had a "sister"... maybe we still do not know that. But we get to meet another person obsessed with alien phenomenon, who is also an abductee. As it turns out both she and Max had become "secret agents" that had infiltrated a government agency that was dealing with various parts of UFOs. That was when the fun started, and unfortunately ended, for Max.
Meanwhile it was Scully's birthday, and all agent Pendrell wanted to do was to buy her a drink, and at least get her to look at him.
But the way this first portion of this story plays out, Scully can't have nice things like coworkers helping her celebrate birthdays or buy her drinks and bars. Because some catastrophic conundrum always interferes.
Because this story involves a plane crash under mysterious circumstances, Mulder applies his expected 2¢, and he is ridiculed by the man who is conducting the investigation.
But it was actually Mulder's unorthodox comments that give this guy a direction as to what to investigate.
The problem is, he can't tell anybody about the evidence that he finds.
The stage has been set, and now Mulder can tell us exactly what transpired. But that will have to wait...